Don’t let me find you, old man, by the hollow ships, either lingering now or coming back again later, or else the staff and the ribbon of the god may not help you. Her I will not set free. Even old age will come upon her first, in our house in Argos, far from her homeland, working the loom and sharing my bed. But go, don’t provoke me, so that you may go home the safer.

Agamemnon answers every part of the priest’s speech. The blessing gets a threat. The staff and the god’s ribbons, the signs that should protect Chryses, “will not help you.” And the daughter gets a future: old age in Argos, far from home, at the loom by day and in his bed by night. He spells it out to her father’s face. The last line is cold courtesy: go, so that you may go home saōteros, “the safer,” a comparative that leaves the alternative unsaid. Homer gives no narrator’s judgment. The speech is enough.